Having obtained a land net, I cautiously approached the pond, which I knew must abound with them, from the concerts nightly held there, and without allowing the shadow to fall on the water, or making the slightest noise; yet the moment I showed myself, every individual who happened to be above water jumped off his perch, and was out of sight in an instant. I tried every means to catch them, but in vain. At last I borrowed from some boys a long tube of wood, with a small hole smoothly and equally bored through the centre, which they used to shoot small birds about the hedges. Armed with some arrows made of sharp tin nails, tipped with cotton wool, I ensconced myself in a bush, and waited quietly for my prey. In a few moments, the frogs, one by one, began to poke their noses out of the water. I selected the finest, and by dint of a good shot, I succeeded in fixing an arrow in his head. In the course of the afternoon I bagged several of the patriarchs of the pond, some of them as large as the largest English toad. Upon being struck with the arrow, they nearly all protruded their sacculi from each side of the mouth, in the manner above narrated.
These frogs are not often used for the table in Germany, but in France they are considered a luxury, as any bon vivant ordering a dish of them at the "Trois Frères" at Paris may, by the long price, speedily ascertain. Not wishing to try such an expensive experiment in gastronomy, I went to the large market in the Faubourg St. Germain, and inquired for frogs. I was referred to a stately-looking dame at a fish-stall, who produced a box nearly full of them, huddling and crawling about, and occasionally croaking as though aware of the fate to which they were destined. The price fixed was two a penny, and having ordered a dish to be prepared, the Dame de la Halle dived her hand in among them, and having secured her victim by the hind legs, she severed him in twain with a sharp knife, the legs, minus skin, still struggling, were placed on a dish; and the head, with the fore-legs affixed, retained life and motion, and performed such motions that the operation became painful to look at. These legs were afterward cooked at the restaurateur's, being served up fried in bread crumbs, as larks are in England: and most excellent eating they were, tasting more like the delicate flesh of the rabbit than any thing else I can think of.
I afterward tried a dish of the common English frog, but their flesh is not so white nor so tender as that of their French brothers.
The old fish-wife of whom I bought these frogs, informed me that she had a man regularly in her employ to catch them. He went out every evening at dusk to the ponds, in the neighborhood of Paris, with a lantern and a long stick, to the end of which was attached a piece of red cloth. The frogs were attracted by the light to the place where the fisherman stood. He then lightly dropped his cloth on the surface of the water; the frogs imagining that some dainty morsel was placed before them, eagerly snapped at it, and their teeth becoming entangled, they became an easy prey, destined for to-morrow's market, and the tender mercies of the fish-woman.
I subsequently brought over several dozen of these frogs alive to England, some of them are still, I believe, living in the Ward's botanical cases of those to whom I presented them, the rest were turned out in a pond, where I fear they have been devoured by the gourmand English ducks, the rightful occupants of the pond.
The edible frog (rana esculenta) is brought from the country, in quantities of from thirty to forty thousand at a time, to Vienna, and sold to great dealers, who have conservatories for them, which are large holes four or five feet deep, dug in the ground, the mouth covered with a board, and in severe weather with straw. In these conservatories, even during a hard frost, the frogs never become quite torpid, they get together in heaps one upon another instinctively, and thereby prevent the evaporation of their humidity, for no water is ever put to them.
In Vienna, in 1793, there were only three dealers, who supplied the market with frogs ready skinned and prepared for the cook.
There is another species of frog common on the Continent, which is turned to a useful account as a barometer. It is the rana arborea, of which many specimens are to be seen in the Zoological Gardens. It has the property, like the chameleon, of adapting its color to the substance on which it may be placed: it especially inhabits trees, and when among the foliage, is of a brilliant green; when on the ground, or on the branches of trees, the color is brown. They are thus used as prognosticators. Two or three are placed in a tall glass jar, with three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry weather the frogs mount the ladder to the very top, but when rain may be expected, they not only make a peculiar singing noise, but descend into the water. Small frogs are a trilling bait for pike and perch, and this reminds me of an incident which I saw. A fine perch was found floating dead, on the top of the water in a pond, in one of the gardens at Oxford; upon examination, it was found to be very thin, and apparently starved to death, some devotee to the gentle art had been the unconscious cause of the sad fate of this poor fish, for a hook was found firmly fixed in his upper jaw, the shock of which projected so far beyond his mouth, that his efforts to obtain food must have been useless, the hook always projecting forward, kept him at a tantalizing distance from the desired morsel. The fish has been dried, and is now preserved with the hook fixed in his mouth.
But fishes, which, like perch, are provided with sharp prickles, occasionally cause the death of those creatures that feed upon them. A king-fisher was brought to me in the summer of 1848, by a boy who had found it dead on the banks of the river Cherwell, near Oxford, no shot, or other marks of injury were found on it, the feathers being perfectly smooth, dry, and unstained; what then was the cause of death?—upon a careful examination, I found the end of a small fish's tail protruding from one of the corners of its mouth, I endeavored to drag it out, but in vain, it was firmly fixed. By dissection, I found, that the fish in question was one of the tribe of small fish which abound in shallow water, and are called in Oxford, the bull's head, or miller's thumb. It has a strong prickle, nearly a quarter of an inch long, with very sharp and firm end, projecting on each side of its gills. The fish had, in its struggles, protruded its prickles, which, sticking in his enemy's œsophagus, had effectually stopped up the entrance, pressing on the wind-pipe, and thus caused its death.